Distraught: Janet Treharne Oakley (left) said her father had suffered appalling care before he died

Her father, a retired civil servant who had worked overseas for the Ministry of Defence, was found on the floor having ripped the emergency button off the wall as he tried to call staff who had ignored him all night.

Mr Silkstone was in the final stages of terminal cancer of the oesophagus, yet nurses had refused to check his pulse, breathing or give him anything to eat or drink for more than 12 hours.

Despite a scathing report into his death by the health ombudsman, his family received just £250 in compensation.

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Mrs Treharne Oakley says she was viewed as a nuisance by Brecon War Memorial Hospital, in Merthyr, South Wales, for wanting to know the truth about her father’s death in November 2008.

She said staff felt there was ‘no need for further apologies’. According to internal emails she uncovered, managers were reluctant to give her too much information in case it gave her ‘something else to complain about’.

Mr Silkstone died 25 minutes after he was found on the floor by his bed.Over the next two years, Mrs Treharne Oakley made repeated attempts to find out about his care but was rebuffed.

She tried to obtain his medical records – normally available for a fee of up to £50 – but was told the trust was not obliged to release them. Last night, the 61-year-old said it took ‘every ounce of my strength’ to force the hospital to disclose the details.

Speaking from her home in Monmouthshire, South Wales, she said: ‘I felt very strongly that my father had been badly let down in the care he had received and that the bosses were covering up this negligence by continually refusing to give me answers.

‘And throughout this, I was still grieving. I was missing my father so terribly and it was all so dreadfully distressing.’

Gradually, through Freedom of Information requests and an investigation by the Ombudsman for Wales, she was able to piece together the details.

It emerged that even though her father had been admitted to the ward vomiting blood, nurses had not checked his breathing.

She also discovered that the hospital had hired consultancy firm Public Partners, at £300 a time, to try to block her investigation. ‘At every instance, they attempted to put up a wall to prevent me from finding out how my poor father died,’ she said.

‘He was a cancer patient and he was dying, I know that. But he deserved to have been treated with dignity.’

The day before he died, Mr Silkstone, a rugby fan who served briefly in the Army in the Second World War before being ruled out through sickness, had booked his seat in the hospital’s lounge to watch Wales play.

‘Yet within 24 hours he was dying, alone and neglected and no one was prepared to take responsibility or investigate how it happened,’ his daughter said.

Mrs Treharne Oakley, a retired magazine editor, said shortly after her father’s death a nurse callously picked up his arm and let it flop back down, saying: ‘See, you don’t need to be frightened of dead bodies.’

‘I was so upset,’ she said. ‘I’d never met this nurse before. I simply told her I wanted to be alone with my father but she seemed completely insensitive.’

Following a scathing 30-page report by the ombudsman, the daughter was handed a cheque for £250 compensation. She described it as a ‘pathetic gesture – literally insult to injury’.

Mrs Treharne Oakley is now trying to amend the laws on medical records so patients’ loved ones can automatically be entitled to see them after their death.

She said: ‘Even now I can’t be sure, but it is clear from the ombudsman’s findings that he did not receive the care he should have done and he believes this may well have contributed to his death.’

Earlier this week a highly critical report by the Health Service Ombudsman exposed ten cases of neglect of the elderly, including examples of patients being discharged in soiled clothes held up with paper clips.